Obamacare gave employers permission to charge smokers up to 50% more for health insurance, as a way to incentivize healthier behavior. But to make sure smokers had a fair chance to avoid these penalties, the law required employers to provide tobacco cessation programs to anyone facing such a surcharge. Almost half of the companies who charge smokers…
Elizabeth Warren describes medical bills as “the leading cause of personal bankruptcy” in the United States. She bases that opinion in part on her own research, in which she and her collaborators surveyed people who had experienced personal bankruptcy, asked them whether they’d experienced health-related financial distress, and concluded that 60% of all bankruptcies in the U.S. result…
High blood pressure is the silent killer. It puts people at risk for heart attacks, strokes, vascular disease, kidney failure…it is basically really bad to have longstanding, undertreated high blood pressure. But it is also harmful to be told you have high blood pressure when you don’t, and to be treated for high blood pressure…
Here’s a great New York Times article, highlighting some of the ways people like me think hospitals should help their patients sleep: If part of a hospital stay is to recover from a procedure or illness, why is it so hard to get any rest? There is more noise and light than is conducive for sleep….
The oncologist had prescribed Xgeva hoping it would strengthen her bones while also delaying the progression of Angela Kahn’s breast cancer. But Kahn (a pseudonym) couldn’t get over the price of the drug. Before the oncologist had a chance to ask how she was feeling, she blurted out that the medication cost “$15,000 a shot.”…
I recently spoke with a Washington Post reporter about a troubling practice. Physicians convince their patients to sign letters to influence public policies the patients often don’t understand. Here is the beginning of that piece. Check it out: A proposal to sharply cut a drug discount program that many hospitals rely on drew some 1,400…
I recently spoke with Margot Sanger-Katz at the New York Times. She’s an awesome healthcare reporter. She wrote a nice piece on some recent nudging research. Here’s the beginning of the article to whet your appetite: The letters doctors received from the county medical examiner included a shocking fact: A patient you once prescribed an…
Usually it costs money to get an MRI. But sometimes, in order to save money, insurance companies pay patients to seek less expensive medical care providers. Here is an excellent news report on the topic from The News & Observer: North Carolina’s largest health insurer is proposing a solution to control runaway health care costs:…
Shutterstock Recently I posted a piece, describing research out of Johns Hopkins, showing that when patients come to ERs – either with no insurance or insurance that is out-of-network – they often face charges that are four, six, or even ten-fold greater than what Medicare would pay for the same services. After the post, I was inundated…
Shutterstock The average life expectancy of American men is almost four years less than men in Switzerland. In fact, among 17 high income countries, U.S. men ranked 17th in life expectancy. American women die young, too, with a life expectancy five years less than the average Japanese woman. Why is American life expectancy so poor? In part,…